


but even closer to you, you seem so very far

by starraya



Category: Holby City
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:25:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9133990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starraya/pseuds/starraya
Summary: They can't do this, can't fall in love. The queen and her bodyguard. It sounds like some stupid Mills and Boon romance, head vs. heart,  but when someone leaks their 'sordid' relationship to the papers the nature of love itself is called into question nationwide. Who ever heard of a lesbian queen?Or the AU no one expected to work!





	1. The Dance

“Stop it. Stop trying to make me into something I’m not. Stop trying to make me into you!”

 

“Elinor, darling.”

 

Abandoned by her daughter, Serena is left standing in the middle of the great hall alone. Blinking back tears, she bites back another pathetic, desperate plea. A queen, or indeed any woman in power who wishes to retain an ounce of respectability, of credibility must never, as her mother used to put it, lose their rag. Never raise their voice. One must be the epitome of calm, even if one felt that their heart was shattering into a thousand pieces and that the shards were splintering their skin inside-out. A queen who lets her emotions rule her can never rule a country.

  
Serena swallows the lump that has formed in her throat. Exhales. She goes to switch off the music playing, but instead finds herself turning up the volume. The Annual Royal Ball is in a week’s time. She’s been instructing Elinor on the dance she will be expected to perform, just like Serena was taught. Where exactly to place your feet at the right time. How to maintain a flawless rhythm. How to never show any sign of weariness not matter how much your feet ached. How to never show any sign of boredom no matter how dull your partner. How to remain perfectly poised, gracious and charming throughout. You must never look as if you are trying too hard to remember the steps, or indeed have learnt them at all, as if you are simply a marionette spun by another’s hands.

  
Serena fears she’s been too harsh on Elinor, again. Too expectant. Too demanding. It’s no wonder Elinor ran off in a cloud of fury. It’s no less than Serena deserves.

  
She’s so lost in self-critique, swaying softy to the music with her arms held up as if awaiting a partner, that when one does appear she almost jumps out her skin. Almost. Serena’s had too many years of learning to marshal her thoughts and school her expression to let her surprise reveal itself in anything more than a little gasp, followed by a teasing reprimand of "can you wear louder shoes please" when Bernie takes Serena’s right hand within her left and slips her other hand around Serena’s waist.

 

Wordlessly, they fall into a natural rhythm together. And for a moment that is all Serena needs: Bernie’s familiar presence (always steady and unfailingly by her side), the comfort of her gentle touch, and nothing but the soothing swell of violins between them, enveloping them. Serena doesn’t think twice about resting her head against Bernie’s shoulder. She craves the closeness like a hunger, instinctively and without question.

 

She feels her throat tighten and tears well on her lashes when Bernie reads her thoughts. “You’re too harsh on yourself,” she mumbles into Serena’s hair.

  
“I fear I’ve got it completely wrong. This is all too much for Elinor. I never considered –”

  
“Serena, finding out your mother isn’t who you thought she was, but is, in fact, the Queen of a country and you’re next in line, would be difficult for anyone to process. Just give her time.”

  
“The ball’s soon. What if she’s not ready then? What if she’s never ready . . . to accept all this . . . to accept this new life.”

  
“And if she is, what if she doesn’t want to anyway?”

  
“Exactly,” Serena sighs, before drawing her head back and looking into Bernie’s eyes. “Do you think this was a good idea? Finding her, after all these years. Telling her the truth.”

  
No one wants to live a lie, Bernie thinks, no matter how safer they thought they were living it. “I thought telling her the truth was always the plan . . . one day.”

  
“It was, but I wanted her to grow up out of the spotlight first, to have the chance to be a normal, happy child. But you’ve seen the papers, Bernie. You know what they’re like. After my mother –”

  
“Those allegations of neglect were disproved immediately.”

  
“But they did their damage. It was why I could never divorce Edward, even though he was a raging alcoholic with a penchant for sleeping with anyone but his actual lawfully-wedded wife, because the press would have had a field day. Would have said we’d destroyed the sanctity of marriage. Didn’t stop them speculating over his affairs though. No matter how many times we tried to censor them, Bernie, they always managed to worm through.” Serena remembers how most of the concern was never about his failings, oh no. She remembered one paper had been particularly alarmed. If she couldn’t keep her husband satisfied, how was she meant to keep an entire nation?

  
“And then Edward died,” she tells Bernie, “and not one paper had a single bad word to say about him. And, I dare say, patriotism was at its highest in years.”

  
“Serena.”

  
“And then, of course, came the revelations about my mother. Her illicit affair. The secret family. Majorie. Jason. The media never cared that the child of this affair, Jason’s mother, my sister, was dead. They were like vultures, pecking out as much scandal as they could. God knows, this family has had more than its fair share. All this scrutiny was why we gave Elinor up. We wanted to shield her. And now she’s ‘come out of hiding’ as the papers put it, now that another secret member of the royal clan has been uncovered, the media has never once weakened its gaze on her.”

  
“You’re worried she’s had too much pressure put on her.”

  
“Yes, and by no one more than me.” Serena’s eyes move down as she fiddles with the lapel of Bernie’s jacket. “I’m worried that I should never have found her. That I should have never taken the freedom I gave her away.”

  
“The freedom,” Bernie says, “to live the life she wants and without all the rules you’ve lived under.”

  
“The freedom to just . . . do what she wants. To just be herself.” To love who she wants, Serena wants to say. To never have to fear disapproval or rejection, or face constant, endless criticism.

 

“To never have to hide," Bernie reads Serena's mind. 

  
Serena’s hand slips away from Bernie’s jacket. Her eyes look back up into Bernie’s. “So,” she takes a breath, “what do you think?”

  
They both know that they have stopped talking about Elinor.

  
“I think, my lady, that you’ve been wearing black for too long.”

  
“I think we both have.”

  
“Serena.” It is barely a whisper on Bernie’s lips, but her voice brushes Serena’s skin like electricity. Serena knows from experience that if this were any other day her heart would hammer furiously inside her chest and she would fight to keep her breathing even as a fire raced through her veins, setting her skin alight. The room would become unbearably hot. Her tongue would feel thick and foreign in her mouth, and she’d struggle to string a coherent sentence together. All her composure would unravel rapidly, and she’d feel herself falling apart, pulled apart by a force so strong, so fierce it would be like stepping onto another planet where the gravity was completely different to earth’s. The sensation would be exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure, and she’d let it pull her apart, pull her down into unknown depths, if she was certain, completely, that there was someone to catch her. If there was someone who had her back, without question, without fail.

  
Serena feels that familiar, invisible tug, pulling her towards Bernie. Into her gravity. Leaning forward, she closes her eyes, for great unknowns are never lit up, they are dark paths and Serena wants nothing more, in that moment, to explore with them with only Bernie’s soft lips to guide her. She is one second away fom giving in, from surrendering to the terror and exhilaration when someone behind them clears their throat.

 

Bernie and Serena spring apart. Snap their heads around to find Raf and Fletch hovering in the doorway.

 

No one else would notice it – the way Serena’s raises her shoulders just a fraction higher as she straightens her back, the way she lifts her chin slightly as she fixes both intruders with a cool, expectant look – but Bernie does.

 

“Yes, go on,” Serena says, in a tone she has practiced to perfection, light and gracious and accommodating, but one that simultaneously holds a glimmer of indifference within its politeness, a sharp edge hidden underneath its velvety cadence – if you listen to it often, if you pay attention to the subtle shifts in pitch, in intonation, like Bernie does. The tone makes you believe at the same time that she has every care in the world for what you are about to say, that there is nothing that could divert her attention, but also that she has not one care in the world, that nothing you could say could agitate her, could truly concern her. It is a defence mechanism, almost, Bernie has figured. The Queen cannot let anyone believe that she is not in fact unflappable. Every trouble must be attended to with grace and ease, every wrinkle smoothed out, every person appeased. But at the same time, you must be reminded that she does not have time on her hands to give freely to anyone, and you are wasting it.

 

“It’s Elinor,” Raf answers, “she’s . . . packing.”

 

“She says she’s not coming back,” Fletch adds. “She says that nothing could –”

 

“Yes, thank you, Fletch.” Serena gives a wave of her arm, a tiny gesture but one that could, and Bernie has seen, silence a crowded room. Silence whole armies. “Is she in her room?”

 

It is only when Raf answers yes and Serena turns to leave that she realises that her hand is still in Bernie’s. Bernie’s grip tightens as Serena tries to pull her hand loose. Serena’s eyes flash with a _what the hell do you think you’re playing at?_ look _._

 

“Serena, let her go. Give her time.” But even as Bernie says it she relinquishes her hold on Serena. The Queen does not take kindly to being told what to do, particularly in front of her staff.

 

Serena doesn’t look back at Bernie once as she leaves the room, her pace unhurried but determined. In all her months of working here, Bernie has never seen Serena _hurry_ anywhere, no matter how urgently her presence was needed. She strides, certainly. Back straight. Hands clasped in front of her. Grace personified. Bernie tries to imagine her running. Can’t. Bernie has, on occasion, teased Serena about her tendency to glide, as Bernie calls it.

 

“Glide? What on earth –“ Serena’s brow had furrowed.

 

“Yes, glide. You know sort of like a swan. You just drift forward and . . . glide _._ ” Bernie had very helpfully motioned, pushing her arms forward and out with a flourish. Serena thought Bernie looked like she was about to start swimming.

 

“Oh, and I suppose you know _nothing_ about unusual walking habits, do you?”  Serena didn’t even bother to stifle a chuckle. “If you’re not dashing down a corridor, yes I do see you – or rather the Butlers do, they know everything you know – you’re slinking around like a backstreet cat and creeping up on people.

 

“I don’t creep.”

 

“And I don’t glide.”

 

“Case settled then.” Bernie had smiled. “For now.”

 

“Miss Wolfe?” Bernie is dragged out her reverie by the sound of another throat being cleared. Raf’s this time. Both men are still there, staring at her.

 

“Haven’t you got anyone else to go spy on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” Bernie tries to keep her voice light-hearted. _Nothing to see here. Move on._

 

But, of course, Bernie remembers as her gaze falls to the floor, and she is left alone in the huge hall with nothing but a heavy silence that she never noticed before, even though the music had long ended, the Butlers know everything. And she reckons that’s one of the reasons, that in the next day, Serena attempts to put a distance between them.

 

-

 

They call Serena The Ice Queen behind her back, Bernie discovered quickly. Even some of her closest and oldest advisors. Even though when Serena laughs, properly laughs it’s as rich and warm as brandy. Even though Serena’s smile, her real one, not the practiced one she wears like any other piece of regalia, lights up her eyes so that they shine ao bright they rival any star.

 

Serena isn’t cold. Far from it. Bernie has seen her behind closed doors with her family. How warm and loving and patient she is with Jason. How much she wants to get it right. To make him feel comfortable and welcome. How she makes absolute certain that his routine is adhered to by staff and that there is as little interruption as possible. How she always tries to see him for a half an hour or so in the evening when possible, and refuses to ever work Wednesday and Sunday afternoon. Those are the times she spends with him, and it’s not nearly enough, she tells Bernie one day, on the verge of tears, having convinced herself how awful an Aunt she is. Bernie says that most Aunts don’t have to make a speech in the morning whilst opening a new school, then have lunch with Henrick Hanseen, who just happens to be Prime minister, a charity ball to attend in the evening before a flight to France in the early hours of the next day, all within 24 hours.

 

She carries it all on her shoulders with enviable ease, or at least to the rest of the world she does. But the rest of the world hadn’t seen her, as Bernie had, fret endlessly before arranging to see Elinor for the first time in years, overcome with insecurity. Regret for the past. Fear for the future. Only Bernie had seen Serena quietly sob after her and Elinor’s first meeting. Elinor wasn’t too pleased to have her life turned upside down by a stranger claiming to be her mother. And what did she expect really? Serena had confided in Bernie. Who on warth wanted this life? Her life.

 

Elinor must think her cold, Serena had told Bernie. A cold-hearted bitch for putting duty before family, for giving her only daughter up and sending her away to live with another family, but it hadn’t felt like that at all. It was an agony so unbearable it couldn’t be put into words, and Serena didn’t, but for Bernie she didn’t have to. Bernie had awkwardly placed a hand on Serena’s shoulder, gave a gentle, comforting pat, at a loss with what else to do. Affection had never been her strong suit. Or emotions. On the battlefield emotions are your enemy. They cause mistakes, fuck up your judgement, blind your eyes with tears and weigh your body down, turning your limbs to lead. Better not to feel, better to block all those nerves off, to go numb. That way you can’t feel hurt. Or the damage your causing. Bernie’s killed people without blinking. Without thinking. If anyone’s the cold one out of her and Serena, it’s Bernie. And that’s why she shakes her head when Serena turns into her embrace and tells her how Elinor must have thought, must still think, her mother never cared for her.

 

Bernie has never one meet who cares as much as Serena. She wasn’t employed as part of the royal household when it happened, but she’s heard of how Serena cared for her mother until her death. How she visited her when her mother couldn’t remember her name. How she cancelled a meeting with the French ambassador when her she mother was caught wandering around the palace grounds, barefoot and confused. How she cancelled everything the day her mother had her stroke, and was there when she drew her last breathe, and stayed awake all night sitting with her. Bernie couldn't imagine what it was like to have to plan and release a statement of her mother's death to the whole nation, and then return to work two days later. 

 

Bernie, of course, has heard all this from the palace kitchens, where gossip is rife, even if the servants are loyal. Some rumours she doesn't put much thought into. Or tries not to. Like Serena's close relationship with the Deputy Prime-minister, Ric Griffin. Bernie's seen first hand that Serena's certainly not _cold_ with him. She gets it. He's a old friend, one Serena can have a laugh and a bit of fun with, one she doesn't have to mantain all of queenly facade around. Yet, at dinners, when Serena sits close to him, shiraz in hand and a smile at her face at something he's said, Bernie feels something hard knot in her stomach. It tightens when Serena casually touches his arm to catch his attention. It's Bernie's business to know who is close to Serena, and where Serena is at all times - she wonders, at times, if her job title should instead read glorified stalker - and, thankfully, that means that, at least since she's been hired, she can tell that Ric and Serena's relationship hasn't been as close as some rumours claim. 

 

Of course, Bernie has no true way of knowing what went on in the past, and if Serena wanted, Bernie's sure she could conceal an affair. She has, on occasion, joked to Bernie that she will never remarry again, but she is far from dead the waist down as some must surely speculate and has had some _enjoyment_  these past years. Serena is definitely not made of ice in that regard. And Serena doesn't just flirt with Ric. No, Bernie has frequently had to double take, when Serena looks at her with a wicked smile on her lips and a glow in her brown eyes.  It's just fun for her though, Bernie reasons. Bernie is just a person, a person not part of the public or part of the politics Serena must navigate everyday, the politics of the country or the inside politics of the palace. Serena can afford, to an extent, to let her guard down around Bernie. To find a little bit of relief in flirtatious banter, when she's doesn't have to worry about shaping her vowels perfectly according to the received pronunciation. It's just a form of release for her. For Bernie, however, some of the things Serena says, or rather implies, makes her skin burn.  Makes her feel as if she is herself made of ice - and rapidly melting.

 

- 

 

The day a tabloid labels her _The Ice Queen_ , Serena hardly pays it any attention, or at least makes a pretty good show of pretending not to. It’s not worth the trouble. She’s certain she’s called worse. And there is nothing wrong with reserve. She’s not stoic, she’s merely reserved. She’s had to be. She’s positive if she ever showed herself to be having even an ounce of good old fun in her youth, someone would say that she wasn’t taking her duties seriously. And if ever that reserve now appeared to crack, they would say that she was getting a bit worn around the edges, that the years had taken their toll.

 

No, she couldn’t care one jot about one stupid headline. But that particular tabloid stops, as the month’s pass, calling her _The Ice Queen_ , and starts calling her things like _lesbian_ and starts calling her life _sordid_ and a _threat to_ _traditional values._ Other papers quickly follow its lead. But Bernie doesn’t see any of that. She’s already fled to Kiev by that time, already shut herself off from any outside communication. Until one day when her world tilts on its axis. 

 

It’s chance that Bernie’s finds out minutes after the event. Someone, a stranger, shows her his phone, shock lining his features at the news headline that has just flashed up on screen. If not for him, it’s likely she wouldn’t have found out until hours later. She’d have thrown herself into work as normal. Ignored everything else. It would only be late at night, before falling asleep, that she would have checked her phone, for missed calls, new messages, reminders of the life she abandoned. She checks, but she never rings back, never answers the texts.

 

It's likely, as well, that she wouldn’t have seen the new messages, frantic and urgent immediately. She has the alerts turned off. She probably would have procrastinated by flicking through a news app, eyes skimming over the typical daily tales of brutality and terror and death, not absorbing the information, until she scrolled down to the headline the stranger had pointed out. Only after that would she have clicked open her messages, heart racing, stomach churning. Only then would she experience the overwhelming nausea she feels now. 

 

As soon as the stranger draws back his phone, she opens her own. Ignoring all the more recent and frantic texts from Jason and Raf and Fletch, she goes straight to Serena in her contacts. _I Miss You._  Delivered last night. Those are the three words she reads, right after the headline. Right after reading three different words that knife her heart, stab her one after the other.

 

_Royal assassination attempt._


	2. The Pumpkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your lovely comments! I was going to leave this as a one-shot. I didn't think people would like the idea that much. It is a bit bananas.
> 
> But yeah, your comments are why this chapter came into being so thank you.

Bernie turns her phone off for the flight. For weeks, she avoided contact with the outside world. Debated whether to open messages for hours on end when they flashed up, before turning off notifications completely. She never answered the phone. Always let it go to voicemail. She only ever gave cursory checks to her emails. Looked out for any with a title all capitals or a red exclamation mark. Often found none and clicked quickly off. She cut herself off from the outside world, not happily but quite voluntary. Now that choice is taken away from her, for nearly four agonising hours.  It’s the universe, surely, deciding to twist the knife she feels like she’s just been stabbed with. _Royal assassination attempt._ It’s the universe finally extracting payment, cruel and somewhat deserved, from Bernie for fleeing from her duties. From Serena. 

 

To any other onlooker, Bernie must simply seem a nervous flyer. The kind that never settles even after take-off. There's a constant twitchiness in her body that never vanishes. She picks up her phone, passes it from hand to hand, leaves it in her lap, picks it up again, clutches it for dear life. She moves around in her seat every five minutes, shuffling this way and that. Rearranging her arms and legs. Crossing. Uncrossing. She tries deep breathing. Tries closing her eyes. All she can see are a film of images, all of Serena, that her brain projects onto the black of her eyelids and plays and replays, repeatedly.

 

She catches a taxi from the airport. Opens her phone. Opens the internet. There is one clip she no longer needs to imagine. It was caught on camera. It's not on any official newspaper websites, but a quick google search and it's not hard to find. This is the digital age after all. Anyone in any position of power can hardly cough without being blinded by camera flashes. Oh, and if you're a woman, and wear the wrong cut of suit – one not quite flattering for your ageing years, one too feminine, one too masculine – or god forbid, the wrong colour, one too pale, one too bright, one that makes you look haggard and washed-up, then expect a full article, reporting on every detail of your outfit the following day. Never mind the speech you just made on how diversity is not a symbol of division within the world but of community, and how differences make us realise how similar we are. How stronger we are together. 

 

Under the shakily shot video of Serena giving another similar speech – her voice just as measured and eloquent, commanding the crowd’s attention, before she is cut off and chaos erupts, people yelling and running and no doubt, some of them, taking out their mobiles, handily equip with a camera – there are comments on her appearance. On her outfit. Too orange. _A sitting target._

 

(There are more comments, hundreds more. Some are worse. Much worse. They talk about her family. They talk about her ‘lovers’. Bernie reads the word _lesbo_ and closes the tab.)

 

Anger would overtake her, if it hadn’t already. Long before she got off the plane, before she boarded it, even before she knew what had happened, anger had crawled beneath her skin and spiked her bloodstream. It flows within her like an illness. She is angry with herself. For what she has done. For what she has run from. She has lived with that anger for weeks, with its particular shades of self-hatred and guilt and shame. But she has felt anger like this. Anger that surges into rage, makes her clutch her phone in a vice-like grip with one hand and curl the other into a fist. Her fury is concentrated on the man, she doesn’t recognise him, must be new, Bernie’s replacement, who stupidly, stupidly turns to Jason first, Clearly, the man could see the shot wasn't aimed for him? That suspicion would have been confirmed within seconds. Try to push Jason out the way, Bernie knows she would have done, would have tried to push him and Serena down, would have done protected them _both_ within a split-second. But the man never thinks to do that, never succeeds in getting Serena out harm’s way, as much as Bernie wishes he does – that Serena will be okay – the more times she watches the clip of the attempted assassination. Every time she tortures herself with thoughts of what the man should have done and with thoughts of what she would have done. 

 

And in between those thoughts she replays a memory. A conversation she and Serena shared. It was the night of the ball, the one Elinor swore she wasn't spending one minute at and Serena was telling Bernie of how proud she was of Elinor. Of her children, Jason included.

 

-

 

Elinor, eventually, agreed to attend the ball. But the evening has far from gone smoothly, and once the speeches have finished and the music wound down and the guests filtered out, Serena is ready to throw off the heavy gown and the glittering array of jewels she wears –okay, less throw, more carefully discard – and simply fall into bed. She is weary to the bone, but also a little wired. It must be the hour, quarter to twelve, not awfully late for a party, but definitely for someone with a half-five start the following morning.

 

“Better get you home,” Bernie quips to Serena, noticing her tiredness as the ball draws to a close, “we don't want you turning into a pumpkin.”

 

“Yeah, I think that was the carriage.”

 

“Was it? What did the girl turn into then?”

 

“Cinderella? She went back to her true self.”

 

Thankfully, no glass slippers are lost when Bernie escorts Serena back to the castle grounds. Serena realises she is the strange kind of tired, the kind that usually overcomes you after a party, after all he dancing and talking and mingling, when the energy of it still hasn’t left your system, when you’re too tired to sleep. She feels relieved that the whole thing is over – all the anticipation and worry and strain she's felt - can finally diffuse. The smile that has upturned her lips all evening can finally slip. At times, it was more than a little forced when she, as per routine, talked to some of the dreary and arrogant politicians she must pretend to regard with neutrality. At times, it was genuine, beaming bright when she caught Jason dancing with a girl she knows he likes, or when she spotted Elinor, beautiful in her dress, with something suspiciously like a smile on her face, or when Bernie very seriously compared her to a pumpkin.  

 

Serena craves peace and quiet after the public affair of the ball. After facing the scrutiny of all those faces when she introduced Elinor formally, scrutiny that never completely faded as she navigated the crowds. Talked and charmed and talked some more. She knew the role she had to play well and it was like slipping into another pair of shoes, even if they sometimes felt like stilettos. Very high and very thin-heeled.

 

She knows she is too tired to sleep, and as they near her room, she tells Bernie the same. Her lips can’t help but curl wickedly as she realises how her words can be read. Bernie smiles back. “I know just the trick,” she says, “meet me in the kitchen in five minutes.”

 

And giving no further clue to her intentions, she leaves Serena to enter her room and turns back down the corridor. She is at the end, by the staircase, when she hears a yell. In reflection, it was more a very frustrated yelp, but Bernie's body reacted faster than her mind and instantly turned back around into a sprint at the sound of Serena's voice. It was only the series of groans and _bloody hells_ that made her slow down and knock on the door, instead of breaking through it. “Everything alright? Serena?”

 

“Yes . . . yes. I just –” Another groan. "Oh, be a darling and help me get out of this damned dress.”

 

Bernie mentally checks she isn’t in a dream. God knows how many times Serena has said something similar within Bernie's private fantasies. “Come on,” Serena beckons, knowing Bernie is hesitating. And Bernie stake one deep breath to steady her heart – beating rapidly from the running of course – before pushing open the door. Those two words had been in her dreams too. Finding Serena Campbell, _the Queen_ , caught rather inelegantly within the thick folds of her evening gown, had not been, however. She had unzipped it impatiently; the zip had jammed a third of the way down and so she had simply tried to pulled it over her head. Tried being the key word.

 

“Don't even thinking of laughing," Serena warns as she hears the door open, even though she is chuckling herself. The dress has gotten stuck over her head and she knows she must look a sight – one arm in a sleeve, one out. 

 

“Wouldn’t dare,” Bernie promises. The course of action she decides upon is gently tugging the gown down, freeing Serena’s arms which come down to hold the front of her dress against her chest. It isn’t yet close to slipping off yet. The zip is still, damnably, stuck.

 

“Why didn’t you try the other way?”

 

“Because the zip caught. And I’m still wearing my heels. Someone," Serena explained "only gave me five minutes to get ready.”

 

“Well, take the heels off.” Bernie’s arms, quite on their own accord, settles just above Serena's hips. Serena doesn't protest. Just leans back a little and allows Bernie to support her as she steps out the shoes and to one side. Bernie's tone of voice, her instructive manner, is something that may have, once or twice, commanded some of Serena's dreams. 

 

"Now," Bernie says, "stand still." Her hands – no longer her hands, quite separate from her brain at this point – touches the soft skin in the middle of Serena's shoulder blades and skims down to the fabric of the dress. One hand presses against Serena's back, pulling the fabric smooth, while with the other Bennie carefully takes the zip between her thumb and forefinger and wiggles it loose. Slides it down to Serena's waistline. Her eyes became fascinated with a small mole on Serena's back, just below her bra-strap. Serena’s voice snaps her out of her little daze.

 

“Ten minutes?”

 

Bernie is, momentarily, at a loss. Serena reads her silence as something else.

 

“Or . . . time for a rain check?”

 

“Ten minutes,” Bernie confirms. Her hands fall away – now very much not on their own accord – from Serena.

 

After Bernie leaves, Serena clutches the loosened dress to her body and closes her eyes. The touch of electricity in Bernie’s fingers still tingles her skin, but she tells herself it’s the warmth of the room. Someone has heated it up for when she returned and compared to the chilly night air she had just walked through, it is boiling. That’s the reason she feels uncomfortably hot. Why she’s extremely glad to finally get this damned dress off. Why she wants to strip off the rest of her clothes. It’s the heat, is all.

 

She lays the dress on her bed and turns to the wardrobe. Searches for more comfortable clothes.

 

Ten minutes, she thinks.

 

-

 

When Serena joins Bernie later, her attire no longer appears like it is trying to consume her. Always a good sign. The place Bernie has asked her to meet her was one of the castle kitchens. Its cupboards have been empty and its surfaces bare for years, but the solid wooden table in the middle still stands and the lights work, apart from the odd flickering here and there. No one comes down here anymore and that is exactly why Bernie and Serena frequently met up here. Retreat to a part of the castle that is closed and cut-off and peacefully, wonderfully quiet – well save for the occasional mouse squeak Bernie desperately and, so far, successfully has managed to divert Serena's attention from. Her eardrums probably couldn't take it.  

 

Quiet as it may be, you can tell the room is deep within the castle. As full as it was in the past with hot puffs of steam and the heat of the cooker, it is freezing now.

 

“A bit chilly,” said once when they met up in the kitchen for the first time in winter, always one never to feel the cold as much as others. To prefer it even.

 

“A bit chilly, she says,” Serena repeated, amazed, “why don’t we just strip to our underwear now, a little while later our limbs will turn to icicles and we'll succumb to pneumonia, but never mind it's a only bit chilly.”

 

Bernie's brain stopped working about the time Serena mentioned stripping, but something must have gotten through because within the next hour she tracked down two portable heaters and set them up in the kitchen. She told Serena that she should become a newsreader. Make the weather report a little bit more interesting with her wonderful turn of phrase. 

 

Tonight, when Serena makes her way over to the table and sits opposite Bernie, Bernie sees that she has come prepared against the cold. Despite fact that the heaters have become a permeant fixture, and that, whenever they are in the kitchen, there is always at least one switched on, even as the months edge into spring, Serena has wrapped herself up in an oversized grey fluffy cardigan. It hides the checked pyjama shirt she flung on underneath and reaches down to the middle of her thighs, covering the old and faded material of the jeans she dug out. 

 

The extra warmth of the cardigan isn’t a bad idea. Not when Bernie sets an ice-cold tub of raspberry ripple ice-cream on the table for them to eat. Freeze them from the inside out. Serena makes no comment on her choice of midnight snack, just raises an eyebrow. If anything, it’s different to the usual bottle of shiraz they share sat together in the kitchen. Neither of them mention the fact it's not yet summer as Bernie peels open the lid off the tub. Serena picks up one of the two spoons Bernie has supplied. As Serena slips her first spoonful into her mouth, a near-sinful sound falls from her lips and Bernie has to, for some reason, avert her eyes.

 

“Heavenly,” she smiles, before carving her spoon into the ice-cream again. “Not hungry?”

 

Bernie’s eyes flick up to meet Serena’s. “A bit,” she says, and picks her spoon. Scoops up some ice-cream.  Two seconds later, her eyes squeeze shut in pain.

 

“Brain freeze,” she tells Serena through gritted teeth. Opens her eyes when Serena tells her to look at her. Tells Bernie to press her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Helpfully demonstrates. Bernie does as she is bid, and soon the pains disappears.

 

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

 

“Your welcome.”

 

 Their spoons clink as they both dig into the tub again. Bernie doesn’t even try to not watch Serena. She tries to focus on other things, though. Notes Serena's thrown-on outfit. How she has removed all her jewellery but the sparkling diamonds in her ears and the small chain around her neck. The former she must have forgotten to take off or thought she'd not had the time to. The latter Bernie knows Serena never took off. It had been a present from her father on her sixteenth birthday. Serena hasn't taken her make-up off yet. What is left. Her first spoonfuls of ice-cream wipe away the last vestiges of her lipstick. Some of her eye make-up has begun to smudge at the corner. The lines there appear more prominent than they had this morning. Her hair is still a little ruffled from when she tried to change out her dress. She is leaning forward, arms on the table, swirling her spoon around in the ice cream. 

 

Bernie doesn’t think she'd saw Serena as relaxed all day. Or felt as relaxed herself. As head of security, she is always on alert constantly. A hundred times more so at public events like tonight. She feels the tension unwind from her limbs as she listens to Serena tell her the events of dinner – events Bernie witnessed, but not, so to speak, on the frontline. She was standing in the background, on the periphery of all the glitz and glamour and gossip of the ball. She heard the commotion coming from the dinner table. The root problem could have been easily fixed and she had said so when trying to calm Elinor down. Jason hadn’t been served the meal that had been ordered. The French Ambassador had told Elinor she hadn’t been eating with the right type of fork, before asking why Jason couldn’t just eat the meal he’d been served. Elinor went off the handle, as much in defence of her new-found cousin, as a culmination of her frustration with having to learn all these stupid, little rituals of high-class society. She had yelled at the French Ambassador and stuck the fork – the wrong type – into her beef with such force and so quickly that she’d knocked over the glass of wine next to her. It spilt over the white table napkin, over the trousers of the French Ambassador and Elinor’s _pale pink_ dress. It took effort for Serena not to place her head in her hands, as the rest of the people around the table stared on in silence, thinking goodness knows what.

 

Serena had apologised to the French Ambassador on Elinor’s behalf. Elinor had stood up and walked out. Serena had made more excuses. Made sure Jason’s meal was taken back and a new one ordered with minimal fuss. After the dinner, she found a way to slip away and finds Elinor, changed into a t-shirt and jeans. She apologised to her. Elinor says that’s she it was her turn to do that. No, Serena said, this is also partly my fault. If she hadn’t put this pressure on Elinor. Elinor countered that Serena had, after one of their rows, said she didn’t have to come if she didn’t want to. And if she did, she only had to endure the dinner.

 

I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I, Elinor had said.

 

No, Serena had replied, moving to hug her, you haven’t. Believe it or not, I did have some premonition that this night wouldn’t go entirely smoothly. Spilling a little wine was definitely one of the best worse scenarios.

 

Well, it’s nice to hear you have so such low expectations of you.

 

I have low expectations, Serena said, of these types of affairs. They never go without a hitch. Why at my first proper dinner I set the table cloth on fire.  And I’ve had hundreds since. Outbursts, accidents, mistakes, losses of temper, they happen. Dinner parties are tedious by nature. They need a bit of brightening up. Nearly everyone at sat at that table, all the lords and ladies and politicians, they’re bored stiff-less too. Stuffed into uncomfortable clothes. Having to act or polite and composed and make small talk. No one likes dinners, Serena told Elinor.

 

They why do they attend them? Why do we have to attend them?

 

My dear, Serena replied, I’ve given up trying to find an answer for that question. But I do know that dinners are disaster prone. What it matters is how we deal with things afterwards.

 

Serena tells Bernie a shortened version of her conversation with her daughter. Practically glows with pride as she says how Elinor changed into another dress and went to the ball afterwards and told the French Ambassador that she had let her nervousness get the better of her and that she hadn’t meant to yell. The man had apologised for not understanding Jason’s needs. For calling out Elinor’s mistake with the fork. Forgotten, she said. Shook hands. Smiled. Walked away to greet other people, determined to, as she had told Serena, represent this family, _her_ family well – and also have a good time, if she could. This was party after all, with music and dancing. She made peace with the Ambassador, but she couldn’t quite apologise for his ruined trousers. Serena had watched Elinor as she talked to the rest of the guests, with a particular inclination to the younger ones of the male variety. She did seem to be having a good time.

 

“See,” Bernie tells Serena after she recounts the night, “she’s her mother’s daughter.”

 

“How so?”

 

“She soldiered on through tonight. Kept going. Even if she was nervous and a bit scared of this strange, new world she’s suddenly found herself in. She has your determination.”

 

Serena’s smiles, wide and bright and beautiful, in response to Bernie’s words. A slight blush colours her cheeks and her eyes flit doen to the table. 

 

“So,” Bernie asks, “how _did_ you set the table cloth on fire?”

 

“It’s a long story.”

 

Bernie made a show of looking at her watch. It was now the day after the ball. “We have exactly 22 hours and 17 minutes and . . . 15 seconds of the day left.”

 

Serena just taps her nose. “A girl has to have some secrets, Miss Wolfe.”

 

Bernie lets Serena have the last bit of ice cream. She eats it, then licks the remaining ice-cream of her spoon. Bernie’s brain all but short-circuits. Does when Serena takes out a tissue from her pocket and tells her she “just . . .has a bit of . . .” and leans forward and wipes the left corner of Bernie’s mouth. Bernie leans into. Until their faces are centimetres apart. Her eyes move down to Serena’s lips, but Serena draws back to scrunch up the tissue and deposit it in the empty ice-cream tub. She wraps her cardigan tighter around herself. Bernie goes to turn on the other heater. When she returns, Serena is looking at the table, tracing patterns with her fingertips into the wood.

 

“Penny for them?”

 

Serena looks up, but there is a far-away look in her eyes. Bernie tries some humour.

 

“Or maybe, perhaps, your highness, something more shiny. Diamond? Sapphire? Ruby?”

 

“Already got them,” Serena says, flatly, still tracing the patterns. Still thinking of something else. Bernie reaches her hand across the table, but doesn’t cover Serena’s with it. Serena’s eyes move from the table to Bernie’s hand to her arm to her face.

 

“There’s something else . . . something I need from you,” Serena says, heart fluttering. She places her hand above Bernie’s.

 

“Okay,” is the only response Bernie can think of.

 

“I need you to promise me something,” she says. “Even . . . even if you don’t want to.”

 

She had explained it to Bernie, put forth a convincing argument, one obviously thought-out and run through in her head. The request was simple. If there was danger, her family, her children, Jason and Elinor, they were to take priority. Not her.

 

Bernie never promises to that. Serena implores her to do what she thinks is right, what’s needed if ever such an occasion occurs. And Bernie agrees to that. Serena is reassured. Bernie’s conscience is a little uneasy, but she can live with it. She is certain she will do what’s needed, what’s right, if it comes to it.  

 

 -

 

Bernie wonders if she thought, properly, really, of what she would do in such a situation, if she would carry out Serena’s wishes, if she just thought that she would make a judgement call at the time and trusted herself with that and thought no more of the topic. Of course, she never found out. As the taxi drops her off at the hospital, Bernie realises that Serena had known, somehow, of the growing danger. Acknowledged the risks she lived with, as Queen, daily. Serena had planned ahead. Tried to protect the ones she loved. 

 

Something Bernie has, so obviously, failed to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more I write this fic, I realise how utterly bananas the premise sounds. Why am I writing this? To vent some politcial ideas on women in power? To magnify the pressures Bernie and Serena face, as two women of a certain age, women who have to juggle work and family and be inhumanely amazing at it? Or just to imagine Serena in a ballgown and Bernie as her big macho head of security? We all know the most important one.


	3. The Missing Furniture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten months and miracles do happen????

They stop Bernie practically at the hospital doors. She's no one, after all, now. No longer head of security. She doesn't hold any executive power. Not any more. A couple of months she could travel anywhere in the castle grounds. Access confidential files. Hold diplomatic immunity in over a hundred countries.

Now she's just any other civilian and they won't let her past hospital reception. Civilians shouldn't even be in this part of the hospital. Half of the street's cordoned off from the press. The security is tight. The tightest it's ever been. But Bernie was never going to let that stop her and she uses whatever means necessary to bypass it. 

She lies. Tells people she's been called back from secondment because of the emergency. Tells people she's been rehired with immediate effect. She has all the power, all the access she used to hold. 

She intimidates. There are security officers who were once under her command. She was there superior for several years and they remember her. They remember every scathing discipline they recieved off her for incompetence. How no one could send a shiver of terror through your spine quite like she did when she was pissed.

And, today, she's furious.

It's a joke really - one Bernie can't register properly now, brain to focused on Serena. It's a joke that she can manipulate her way though security so easily after one of the greatest political crisises in a generation. 

It's the nurse that stops her when Bernie can't procure any identity badge. (She left it on Serena's desk, all those weeks ago.) It's ths nurse that tells her, in a firm but quiet voice, that she shouldn't have been let through and please could Bernie leave the building immediately or she would be forced to call security.

"Please," Bernie begs. "Just tell me if she's stable."  

"Miss, if you refuse to leave I will have to -"

"Just that one thing, please."

Bernie's been checking the news sites on her phone. She has her phone set for alerts. In the taxi, she refreshes the page every two minutes.  _Alive, but critical._ That was the official statement. Just that.

"Is she still critical? At least tell me that." 

"Miss, I'd appreciate it if you lowered your - "

Through the corner of her eyes Bernie sees members of security closing in on her.

"Wait," a voice stops their advance, stops them from probabley - physically - throwing Bernie out the building.

"Bernie, your back." Ric Griffin leads her to one side of the room. 

"Serena?" It is the only word Bernie can get out. Ric's expression is unreadable. Grave, even. He hestitates in replying. Bernie is pale and shaking and wound-tight with worry and he knows whatever he says will unleash numbers of questions.

"Yes. And she's stable." 

Bernie has never been much of a crier, but tears well in her eyes automatically at Ric's words. Waves of sheer relief crash over her and she presses a palm to the wall to steady herself.

"Have you seen her?"

"Just now."

His answer should reassure Bernie, but it doesn't. Her old feelings of jealously coil tight in her gut. The old feelings of guilt. Ric's was probably one of the first by Serena's side. Bernie gave up that privilege long ago. Voluntarily. And now, after all these weeks apart, miles apart, oceans apart, she's in the same building as Serena. She may even stand on the same floor as her. A mere five-minute walk way. A two minute run. And she'll ever be to see Serena, see that's she alive for her own two eyes.

"She's came out a theatre a few hours ago. She's still unconscious, but she's due to wake up soon." Ric touches Bernie's arm lightly in comfort. "Elinor and Jason are with her."

"Good. That's good. Can I -"

"They're not allowing any more visitors." Ric beats her to it. "I'm sorry Bernie, but no one from the public's meant to be here." 

"I'm Serena's . . ." The rest of the sentence sticks in Bernie's throat. What is she too Serena? She's not even her employee anymore? As for her role of confidante, they haven't talked since Bernie's left and it was her choice to cut all contact. Bernie ends up choosing "friend", but as soon as she's says it, the word feels weak and pathetic and flimsy. 

Serena was never just her friend. 

"They've had to go on red-alert, you understand. Security's at an all time-"

"Really?" Bernie changes tactics. Ric isn't going to do anything but follow the proper policy and she can't just walk out without seeing Serena. She's not leaving her again. 

"It was this all time-high security that let me through. It's a joke. Something one needs to whip those boys in to shape and actually remind them of their sworn duty to protect the state. I bet £50 quid that most of them  are only just out of nappies. Ex-military, decades of experience until my belt. I know the palace in and out. I can reassume my role with immediate effect. Forget the paperwork, forget the proper procedure. There was an assassination attempt today. The greatest breach of security this century. The safety and wellbeing of the crown is paramount."

Bernie's argument is undeniable in it's plausiblity, it's persuasiveness and she watches as Ric's expression changes, as he starts to agree with her. Bernie feels calmer, in control. She can do this. She can keep the security guards in line. She can keep peace and order for this country. She can keep Serena safe.

From behind her, there's a titter at the receptionist desk. A deadpan remark from one of the nurses who recongises Bernie from the rumours circulated in the press. It is the nurse who Bernie yelled at. 

"Yes. I'm sure the whole country knows how attentive she is to the crown's needs." 

- 

Their first kiss was not by chance. There was no universe, Bernie is certain, where it wouldn't have happened. Because, in that moment, there was nothing she could have done but kiss Serena.

She waited for Serena in the disused kitchen. Their kitchen. It was nearing twelve o'clock but Bernie knew Serena would come. She'd promised - as soon as her after her meeting with Ric had wrapped up, as soon as she'd said goodnight to Jason and Elinor - she promised that she would be there for Bernie. 

If there's anything Bernie had learnt about Serena in the two years she had known her, it is that, in her private life at least - although Bernie does not know whether being forced to fake interest whilst some old white man at some ball or another rattles on about conservative values and making the country great again, counts - she does not lie. She tries her best never to lie. Never to break promises. 

Bernie had once teased Serena "never to go into politics". Serena had pouted. "Yes, that's what my mother told me when I wanted to join a pro-life march due to the rise of the right's anti-feminist rhetoric in the eighties."

"Really?"

"Yes. I had a disguise prepared and everything. I was so determined I think I would have tied my bedsheets together and flung them out the window, if my mother hadn't given be a very serious lecture on political neutrality and 'Serena, why are you always so difficult?'"

"I'm guessing you didn't have the chance for teenage rebellion." 

"Oh I did, but very discreetly. Smoking something very much illegal in the garden and bribing the groundskeeper to keep quiet, cutting up a dress that was more a medieval torture instrument than an corset and a skirt, and ah yes, one very ill-advised and unsatisifactory shag with one of the serving boys."

Bernie gaped. She must have, from Serena's chorus of laughs. 

"Okay, only one of them is true. The cigarette was only tobacco although it was a very bad habit."

"So that leaves the last two. One false, one true."

"Hmm. You'll have to guess which."

- 

Bernie supposed, when she entered the kitchen and saw that the table and chairs had somewhat magically disappeared, that her annoyance stemmed from the memory of all those seemingly trivial conversations she and Serena had shared across the table. 

The thought of someone in the kitchen and removing the furniture felt like an invasion of privacy. An intrusion into her and Serena's space. She knew it was silly to feel so pissed-off. Serena can simply order someone to bring the furniture back, but if she did, then the staff would know that she and Bernie use the kitchen. It would no longer serve as an illusion of escape from the palace's watching eyes.

There was nothing Bernie could do about the situation though, although she was plotting how to sneak a sofa down three flights of stairs, as she sat down on the dusty floor and rested her back against the wall. Though it was August, the room was still cool. She kept on her jacket, but unbuttoned the top buttons of her shirt. The collar had been irritating her for hours. She rubbed at the skin off her neck and let out the sigh she'd held in all day. 

Serena appeared twenty minutes later, brandishing a bottle of wine in one hand and a glasses in the other.

"I bring gifts," she announced.

Bernie looked up at her with tired eyes and smiled. "My kinda girl."

Serena placed the bottle and the glaces down on the floor and sat next to Bernie. Her clothes were mismatched. A old, fluffy - and some might say ugly - cardigan wrapped over a suit probably worth more than the price of the table and chairs. She'd swapped heels for slippers - like the cardigan also of a questionable pattern and design - but Bernie loved this Serena. Make-up fading, suit creased, comfort clothes thrown on. Felt honoured that Serena let Bernie see her like this. Felt a warm fuzzy feeling in her belly when she thought how are comfortable and familar they'd become with each other.

When she sat down, Serena didn't hesitate to sidle up to Bernie so they are pressed side to side, their elbows brushing. Serena didn't pour the wine immediately. She knew Bernie and she didn't need wine this instant. She needed to talk and for someone to listen.

"It wasn't your fault," Serena started, firm and resolute. She persisted even when Bernie couldn't quite hide her self-depreciating ting eye-roll. She placeed her hand on Bernie's. "It wasn't."

"We were out. You can't be everywhere at once. Know everything that's going on everywhere in the palace." 

"That's my job."

"To predict freak accidents? A mentally ill man wandered onto the grounds, probably distressed and paranoid. Someone, god knows who, let him, out of concern, perhaps in and . . ." 

"And now my friend and colleague is fighting for his life." Bernie's voice breaks and she turns to Serena. "That man was looking for me, he was in my unit." 

"Oh, Bernie." Serena clutched Bernie's hand. "You never said." 

"He's contacted me a few times since he was discharged. E-mails. I didn't think he would -"

"You couldn't have predicted that things would escalate."

Serena knew that if there was any indication threat, Bernie would have picked up on it. She knew Bernie's punishing her self. She didn't know why. Bernie didn't often talk of her years in the army, but Serena thought the root might there. She didn't what it is. She couldn't imagine life in the field, everyday spent amongst chaos and death. She couldn't imagine the wounds Bernie's seen, or the wounds left in the minds of soldiers. 

Serena turned closer to Bernie and cups her cheek with her hand. Softly she stroked away a tear with her thumb. 

"Don't you dare." 

Bernie's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Don't you dare think you're any less than brilliant." 

Bernie eyes fell to Serena's lips and Serena's to hers. Not for the first time, granted, did their hearts quicken and their bodies inch closer, but for the first time Bernie found bravery to the close any space left between them. 

They kissed and kissed. Bernie's tongue delved into Serena's mouth, eliciting a moan from Serena. Serena moved her her lips to trace Bernie's jaw, before using the advantage of Bernie's open shirt to kiss the skin of neck, whilst Bernie's hand slipped under Serena's cardigan to palm her breast through her top. She found out that Serena took off her bra earlier along with her shoes and Bernie's fingers brushed the hard peak of her nipple. 

Has she always, during their night-time conversations, Bernie wondered, not worn a bra? A hot rush pulses through her, between her legs. She shifted closer to Serena and feet her back twinge in pain. Both of them sat on a hard floor, not caring for the positons of their limbs, only for how close they could press their bodies together. How tightly they could tangle together until there was no difference between them. It wasn't ideal. They would ache for days.

But Bernie, looking back on it, isn't certain they would have stopped - maybe to ask if it was okay - but not to move, not to risk parting. Maybe they would have stood up, for practicality's sake, maybe she would have pressed Serena against the wall and pressed the length of her body against hers and a thigh between her legs. Maybe she would have have slid her fingers under Serena's trousers. If only the damn table was still there or one chair, she could have had Serena on both. 

But she didn't. Her phone bleeped with news of Fletch and it pulled them both back down to earth. They parted, panting, lips swollen from each other's lips and hair dishevelled from each other's hands. 

"I should . . ." They both said in unison. 

Bernie can't remember which one of them left first. 

She thought of their first kiss often after she left for Kiev. Instead of their arguments and their tears, she thought of those minutes when there was nothing but Serena's lips and moans and the softness of her hair against Bernie's fingers. Minutes where they were eager to taste every taste of the other yet untasted and explore every inch of skin yet unexplored, eager to catalogue every touch and sound and reaction.

She wished that she could live in that moment forever. That they never parted and never saw each other anew. That they never had such fire added to their hopes. 

The moment you have something to hold on and never let go is the moment you have something to lose. 

- 

"Mr Griffin," the nurse taps him on the shoulder, not bothering to hide her glare at Bernie's presence still on her ward. The nurse whispers to him, but Bernie's hears the two words without mistake. 

"She's awake." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Anyone still interested in this "WTF" AU?
> 
> Btw if you ever pick out your favourite part of a chapter in a comment, it will make my day (and inspire me to write more.)


	4. The Vineyard

She gets her job back within an hour. Ric vouches for her. Helps push the decision through. But, newly-issued access card around her neck and the sleeves of her jacket rolled-up, Bernie hesitates from jumping into action. When she and Ric pass the room, she’s been told Serena is in, she slows.

Ric places a hand on her arm.

“I don’t think . . .”

“Not a good idea?”

“She’s . . . recovering from major surgery, probably disorientated, tired. Wouldn’t it best to get everything ship-shape for her first?”

Bernie nods, turns, walks on. She swallows the lump in her throat and thrusts her hands into her pocket. “Time to give these so-called guards a good old kick up the backside.”

When they reach the end of the corridor, Bernie flashes a forced smile at Ric, a quick goodbye, and marches on ahead – time or work. For several hours, she concentrates on that.

On orders and protocols and vets and reports. She notices how a few of the security personnel, some of the younger members, shake when she barks out her commands, grills them with question after question. Makes sure they’re fit to serve.

“Bitch,” Bernie hears hissed behind her when she moves onto the next unfortunate guard.

She pivots, smiles, almost sweetly. “Why thank you, Anderson.”

She’s glad the man who replaced her, all those weeks ago when she left for Kiev, is nowhere to be seen. Fled out of shame, probably. He’s lucky Bernie’s too busy to track him down and shove him against a wall and ask him if her understood the whole protect the crown at all costs part of his fucking job.

The shooter’s lucky too, the far-right white supremacist and champion of ‘traditional values’. Yes, he’s got three bullets in him now, courtesy of the police, but at least they hunted him down before Bernie could.

Fury burns in Bernie’s veins and she channels it all into work. She pushes the past to the back of her mind, the night she and Serena shared the ice-cream, their first kiss, the vineyard, the phone-call, the plane to Kiev, the gunshots. She pushes it all away. Focuses on the present. And, by the end of the day, she is shattered, having not stopped since she got off the plane, but she is calmer. She is in control and back where she should be, here, close to Serena. It feels right. Feels like the world is righting itself.

Bernie hovers in the middle of the corridor. Serena’s room is a few footsteps away. Ric was being nice earlier. She knows he knows what happened between her and Serena. She knows he knows why seeing Serena is not a good idea.

Bernie leans her head back against the wall and breathes out and in.

A door swings open. Someone scoffs. “What are you doing here?”

Bernie’s head whips around. “Elinor. How’s your mother?”

“Answer my question.”

“Soon as I heard, I flew straight here. Serena, is she –”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“Did she say that? Elinor? Will you ask her?”

Elinor tilts her head to the door of her mother’s room. “She’s resting. Don’t disturb her. Better yet,” Elinor storms past Bernie, “get back on another plane to Kiev.”

“I can’t. I’m head of security. I got my job back.”

“Congratulations.” Elinor pauses at the doors at the end of the corridor. “But, you know what they say. Too little . . .” The doors slam behind her.

“Too late,” Bernie finishes, voice little more than a whisper.

-

“Morning.” She announced her presence with a shuffle of feet and a voice that couldn’t be above a murmur, but pierced the silence and heat of the greenhouse. She found Serena there, sometimes, tending the plants, just before the beginning of day. She knew the quiet calmed her. Helped her think.

“Morning.” Serena cleared her throat. Settled her water can down on the side with a clink.

“Busy week ahead,” Bernie remarked.

“Quite.” Serena agreed, not looking up at Bernie as she fumbled for the ties of her gardening apron.

“Let’s just hope we don’t have a repeat of last week.”

“No, w-why. Do you. . .” Serena yanked at the ties. “Do you want it too?”

“Here.” Bernie mumbled, moving behind Serena. She unknotted the apron tie.

“I mean,” Serena turned around to her. “I don’t go around kissing members of staff as a . . .” Serena gulped, aware of just how she close and Bernie were. How close their lips were. “. . . matter of course.” Her breath suddenly thin, Serena’s words fluttered away like leaves in an autumn breeze.

“No, I, I meant we could all do with a bit of a break.” Bernie stepped back, twisting her hands in the air.

“Right, of course.” Serena slid the apron from around her neck. “I knew what you meant . . . I just, you know, no rest for the wicked. I have a meeting with half of parliament in ten minutes.”

Serena turned to hang up her apron on its peg. Honestly, she thought, first that damn gown, and now something as simple as an apron. With the rate at which she needed Bernie to undress her, she might as well invest in a lady’s maid. Serena cheeks pinked. A warmth flushed through her. Oh God. Wrong line of thought. Very wrong line of the thought.

“Now, if you’d excuse me," she stuttered and brushed past Bernie, out the door.

“Serena, wait.” Bernie chased after her. They couldn’t just leave things at that. They saw each other every day, they worked with each other every day. They needed to talk this through.

Bernie fell into step beside Serena. “Last week, in the kitchen . . . you kissed me back.”

“I suppose I did.” Serena carried on striding, eyes flitting to the floor, to the walls, to anyone but Bernie.

“What happened. . . was it . . . a complete shock?”

Silence. Nothing but their unsteady breathes, their steady footsteps.

“No.” Serena took a breath. “Not completely.”

“Okay.”

“Not actually a shock at all.”

“Oh.”

“It’s just . . . I’ve never . . . and I didn’t think . . ." Serena licked her lips. Her next words came out in a rush of air, tripping over one another. “I’ve never been more than friends with a woman before.”

“But,” Bernie lowered her voice, “you’ve wanted to be?”

“I’d thought about it, yes.”

Silence again.

They were nearing the counsel room now. Serena would go in, and Bernie would leave her at the door, go off to brief her staff for the week ahead. They were only footsteps, seconds left for them to talk.

Serena begun again. “I just didn’t quite realise what it would feel like.”

“With another woman?”

Serena shook her head. “No. I didn’t realise what the difference would feel like, between wishing for something and, well,” Serena raised her eyes to Bernie, fleetingly, “it happening.”

Before Bernie could respond, Serena focused again on the doors in front of her. She tilted her chin up and straightened her shoulders into what Bernie, privately, called her battle stance. She went through the doors, left Bernie standing in the corridor.

Bernie had kissed the girl and the girl had kissed her back and not a frog in sight thank God – but Bernie had grown up on her father’s tales of the battlefield, not fairy stories – and she had no idea what happened next.

-

After the meeting, Elinor spotted her mum talking to Ric outside the room. She smiled as he patted her on the arm and left with a grin.

“He likes, you know?” She told Serena.

“Ric?” Serena laughed, shook her head. “Nonsense. He’s a friend.”

“He doesn’t look at you like a friend.”

“Well he is.”

“Well, then, I think, perhaps you need more than a friend.”

Serena arched an eyebrow at her daughter’s words. “You do, do you?”

“It’s been years since . . . there hasn’t been anyone since dad and you're–”

“Getting a bit past it?”

“I was going to say you deserve some fun.” Elinor corrected her mum.

“Fun? I’ve no time, or wish, to find a second husband, Elinor.”

“I didn’t say you had to marry the guy.”

“So, let me get this right, my daughter is suggesting I begin a covert affair? How pray tell, would that work? And where would this guy come from? Shall I just go outside and pluck him off the streets?”

“Fine.” Elinor held her hands up. “You don’t want a man. I give up.”

“Elinor,” Serena narrowed her eyes. “There aren’t any other covert affairs in this castle that I should know about are there?”

Elinor’s eyes widened innocently. “Of course not.” She practically skipped away.

Serena was not comforted in the least, not convinced that her daughter wasn’t up to something or that she believed that Serena was up to something. And with Ric, of all people!

Serena couldn’t help feeling like she lied to Elinor. Anything secret kept from her daughter. What would happen if Elinor found out about her and Bernie’s kiss? Would it push them apart again? Drive her away? What would she ever say to Elinor, if she guessed, when Serena couldn’t even wrap her own head around it all?

-

“I can’t do this,” were the words that fell from Serena’s mouth when she saw Bernie again. “We can’t do this.”

“Serena? Slow down.” Bernie reached out to touch Serena’s shaking hand, but Serena stepped back before she can.

“This can’t work. You, me. The queen and her . . . her bodyguard. God, it sounds like a stupid Mills and Boons romance. Bernie we can’t do this.”

“Has something happened. Has something said something?”

“No, no. Not yet at least.” Serena squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her fingertip and thumb against the ridge of her nose. “Can’t you see how ridiculous this is, though? It’s almost laughable.”

“I know. What as stupid fool I was.” Serena’s eyes snapped open as Bernie’s voice hardened to steel. “I’m just staff. Everyone knows that, and don’t worry I won’t tell them any different.”

This time it was Bernie who left Serena standing in the hallway.

-

They were occasional days when they didn’t see each of course, but over the next three days a first happened. They never seemed to catch sight of the other. Never seemed to ascertain which one of them was searching, which of them was hiding. Until the day in the vineyard.

“Oh, they you are!” Serena exclaimed when she saw Jason sat on the bench. “I was just about to send out a search party.”

“That wouldn’t be a practical use of resources.” Jason replied.

“No, I suppose - Ms Wolfe.” Serena greeted when she saw the mop of messy blonde hair. “I’d wondered where you’d got too.”

“Bernie and I were discussing the procedures in place in the event of nuclear war.”

“Lovely.”

“Did you know that in 1959 the doomsday clock was set at two minutes to minute, the closest it’s ever been? And that the clock is currently set two minutes and a half minutes to midnight, the second closet it’s ever been?”

“I did,” Serena responds, “but thank you for reminding me in case I forgot. Do you and Ms Wolfe always talk of the likelihood of global catastrophe? Aren’t there more pleasant subjects to discuss?”

“Ms Wolfe says that we should face things that frighten us, not shy away from them.”

“Does she now?” Serena turned her head to Bernie who hadn’t uttered a word since she’d found her and Jason in a corner of one of the palaces many sprawling vineyards. “What are your thoughts on nuclear war, Ms Wolfe?”

“It’s not . . . something I would particularly like . . . to happen.”

“Right answer.”

“I have to go,” Jason piped up, glancing at his watch. “I had Question Time taped so I could watch it in half an hour.”

“Jason,” Serena called after her nephew before he left. “Could we talk . . . tonight. Eight O’clock. Before your shower?”

“Okay,” he grinned at her, then Bernie. “Bye Bernie.”

“Bye.”

“Mary Beard was on last night’s Question Time,” Serena explained to Bernie after Jason left. “Jason’s a bit of a fan.”

She sat down on the bench. Didn’t know whether she wanted Bernie to join her, until Bernie did. She left a space between them – one Serena was grateful for. Any closer and Serena thought the gravitational force of being in Bernie Wolfe’s orbit, of being so close to her very soft, very kissable lips, might be her undoing.

Serena’s fingers tugged at the pendant at her throat. “When did you know . . . that you were of the Sapphic persuasion?”

“I don’t know, I suppose, in my teens.” Bernie sighed. “When I was sixteen, seventeen?”

“How did you feel?”

“It was the 1980s.”

“Right.”

Silence washed over them for a minute, before Serena turned to Bernie. “I . . . I don’t know how to do this, Bernie. I’m sorry for how I was before, I’m just . . .”

Tears shone in Serena’s eyes and Bernie’s heart – wound up from their earlier argument – loosened instantly.

“Serena, it’s okay.” Bernie grasped her hands.

“Really? Have you ever heard of a queer Queen before?”

“Only one in drag.” Bernie quipped and Serena laughed despite herself. The laughs dissolved into sobs as she was unable to blink back the tears. Bernie traced patterns on the skin of Serena’s hand with her thumb.

“I knew,” Serena looked down at her and Bernie’s hands. “I knew before mother even arranged the marriage, that I was . . . that I liked girls too and I know had to hide it. My father passed, and they placed the crown on me when I was 21 and I convinced myself I only ever wanted to walk the path set out for me. I married, I tried for children. The years passed, and they never came, and I thought it was my fault. I was different. I wasn’t satisfied, I wasn’t happy with Edward as I should have been.”

“He was a drunk, Serena. Anyone in your position –”

“My mother told me to just grin and bear it. She couldn’t see why I couldn’t just rise above it. Fulfil my duties. I was never quite the daughter she’d wished for. I never could quite match that girl, no matter how hard she tried. God knows what’d she think of me now. Of this. God knows,” Serena broke into a fresh wave of sobs, “what anyone would think.”

Bernie wrapped her arms around Serena, pulled her close.

“Don’t you dare think,” she murmured into Serena’s hair, “that you are any less than brilliant.”

Serena wanted to say that it wasn’t what she thought, or what Bernie thought, that mattered, was it? But she was too comfortable within Bernie’s arms to break the embrace.

Only after a while did Bernie withdraw and get to her feet.

“Now, Campbell, I’ve always wondered.” Bernie brushed her hand across the grapevines next to her. “Just how many people did you sweet-talk to make the grape your national fruit?”

“I did no such thing.” Serena stood up. “It’s been a tradition for centuries to gift the royal wine to other countries and organisations as a sign of peace and gratitude.”

“Ah, the humble grape . . .” Bernie plucks one off its stem. “An emblem of prestige, grown within the very heart of the royal grounds.”

“You sound like a Marks and Spencer’s advertisement.”

Bernie held up a grape, plump and glistening in the summer sun. “Does this measure up to your standards, your majesty?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tasted it yet.” Eyes sparkling, Serena bent her head, parted her lips and took it within her mouth.

Bernie’s legs went weak.

-

The next morning, running on five hours of sleep and a concerning amount of caffeine, she arrives at the hospital. Bernie hovers once more outside Serena’s door.

As head of security, she must see Serena as a matter of course. Must talk through plans of action, and, of course, make sure the crown is safe. But, even though, now she is head of security again, there is nothing stopping her from entering the room, Bernie can’t bring herself to open the door. Not without invitation.

Her hand reaches for the door handle. When it twists, Bernie jumps back, as if burnt.

“Jason.” She breathes out when he appears.

“Bernie,” he smiles. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.” Bernie smiles. Jason is the only one, so far, who seems pleased that she is back and yet she can’t think of anything to say to him after all that’s happened. “Is, urm, Elinor with Serena?”

“No. She left to find you.”

“Really?”

"Serena wants to see you.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

Bernie swallows. Places her hand once more on the door handle, grips it. Pushes down.


	5. The Phonecall

Bernie perches on the chair opposite Serena's bed and waits for her to talk. She wants to take Serena's hand, hold it within her own and feel her pulse. Feel the proof that she is alive. That it will take more than a bullet to a major artery in the arm to finish Serena Campbell off.

But she doesn't reach for Serena's hand. Serena here, alive, asking to see her is a miracle. And it's one Bernie doesn't deserve. Serena is right next to her. Bernie can hear her breathing, can see her breathing, but there's still oceans between them. 

Serena isn't looking at her, rather her eyes are fixated on picking at an unravelling thread on her blanket. She is somewhere Bernie can't reach her, behind a pane of glass. Bernie waits for the cracks to appear, wait for Serena's voice to splinter the surface.

"All those weeks I waited and I thought, she'll return and when she does I'll put on a new shirt, a new lipstick." Serena raises her eyes, as cold and sharp as a knife, to Bernie. "I thought: oh, I'll win her back. And look at me now."

Serena gestures with her good arm to her hospital gown, laughs bitterly.

"I think they were aiming for the heart. Talk about a monumental fuck-up." 

"Serena," Bernie begins, "I . .."

"You can explain?" Serena arches a brow. "You can explain the radio silence? The no calls. No texts. No letters."

"When we decided . . ."

"When _you_ decided . . ."

"I thought it was for the best. Communication might have made it more dangerous."

"Spare me the bullshit, Bernie. I've been shot and it bloody hurt." Serena rests her head back on her pillow, closes her eyes. "Please, spare me the bullshit."

"Are you in . . . do you want me to get a doctor?"

"Bit late for that."

The lump in Bernie's throat hardens, she tries to swallow it back. Can't. "I wanted to call you. I did. I just . . . I was rubbish."

"You ran from me." 

"Not from you," Bernie insists. "Never from you." 

"You ran from us."

-

It was late and Serena was in her office, trying to sign one bit last of paperwork whilst Bernie stood behind her. Her hands kneaded the knots in Serena's shoulders. Every now and then, she would, very distractingly, bend down to press her lips against Serena's neck and pepper kisses across the soft skin. 

It had been a busy couple of weeks and Serena's restraint is paper-thin. Easily burnt away by the heat of Bernie's mouth. Serena drops her pen on her desk, twists in her chair so she can claim Bernie's lips with her own. 

They see each other every day, but they can never seem to catch a moment together. A real one.

They're careful now, around one another. Careful not to look to long, or smile to bright. Careful not to touch. No more hands skimming, fleetingly, over arms or hands pressing into the middle of backs. 

The gestures are markers of truth now, evidence to be spotted and analysed. But that night was the first Serena had seen there how others saw then. The gestures were dirty, incriminating.

And, that night - with Bernie's tongue sliding against her own, on her skin, Bernie's hand sliding under her shirt, her fingertips grazing across soft, smooth skin, eliciting a groan from Serena's lips - the phone rang.

Serena placed her hand over Bernie's wrist to still her movements.

"Five minutes," she promised.

Bernie withdrew, finger _accidentally_  sweeping over Serena's nipple. She sauntered around Serena's desk, smirked.

"Oh, I don't think it'll take much longer than that."

Serena knew she wasn't on about the phonecall, she knew it as acutely as she did that they'd never got past futher than wandering hands, and, if she didn't tug Bernie's hand lower tonight, she might simply burst into flames.

Serena cleared her throat, crossed her legs. Picked up the phone.

Bernie watched Serena's face fall. Watched the fear form in her eyes.

Bernie sprang forward, but Serena held out a hand to stop her taking the phone. Bernie's mobile beeped and she took it out her pocket. Squinted at the words that flashed up on the screen.

The line went dead. Serena placed the phone back in the cradle. 

"Same message?" Serena asked, voice trembling. 

"Every call is recorded. We can track him. We can -" 

Serena threw her pen across the room. It was the closest thing to a scream. She stood up, pressed her palms against the table. 

"We can do nothing." 

"They're probably empty threats. He just wants the money. Who would believe him Serena?"

"Oh, I don't know," Serena throw her hands up in the air, "the papers?"

"We can have it suppressed. We can seek court action. Issue injunctions. It's just rumour and speculation." 

"But it's not? Is it?" Serena yelled, body shaking. "Elinor will find out. I'll lose her again."

"Serena, calm down." 

"Everyone will find out. We'll pay him off, but he won't stop."

Bernie could hear Serena's breathing become more and rapid. She stepped towards her.

No," Serena protested. "Stay away from me. We have . . ."

"Serena," Bernie soothed,  wrapping her arms around her.

"You need to stay away from me." Serena sobbed, but Bernie held on through her struggling, her attempts to push her away, and when she felt Serena still, sink, Bernie clutched her tight to stop her falling to the ground.

- 

Bernie knocked on the door of Serena's for the first time in weeks. Normally she just slipped in the room. Serena never minded,  but she did remind Bernie to buy louder footwear after the one time (okay, _two_ times) Serena had looked up, expecting to see air and not Bernie Wolfe, and jumped out of her skin.

But this time Serena called to let her Bernie in, heard the clack of her shoes. 

There were no greetings between them. Just the thud of newspapers against Serena's desk. 

"Nothing," Bernie reassured her. "Not a whisper."

"Social media?"

"Just the usual."

"Thank God," Serena sighed in relief. 

"And it'll stay like that. We traced the call. I've got men hunting down our mystery man as we speak. I've doubled the PR team. If any rumours start up, we can squash them before they gain traction." 

"Thank you."

"The team will continue to monitor the press. I've given them clear directives on specualtion and slander. Meanwhile, I've upped security with regards to internal and external communications. Phone, e-mail, post - it's all monitored." 

Serena stood up, instinctively drifted towards Bernie.  "It was monitored before. How did he get through?"

"I don't know, but he won't get through again." Bernie wanted to close the gap berween them, wanted to hold Serena's hands in hers. Didn't dare.

"It sounds like you're been busy indeed. Did you even sleep?"

"Did you?"

"A bit. I kept tossing and turning. I keep imagining."

"Serena, nothing's going to happen, I - "

"No, not that. I keep imagining you were besides me. That you _could_  be beside me." Serena released a deep breath. "I kept imagining a world where it didn't matter one jot who I . . . loved."

The room froze. Their gazes locked, then, the moment shattered. 

Bernie's dropped her eyes, stumbled over her words. "I need to -"

Serena didn't take in the rest of her excuse. Bernie's exit was a blur. 

Whatever Bernie needed, it wasn't her. 

- 

Serena couldn't stay in her office: needed fresh air. She escaped to the vineyard, trailed her fingers through the leaves, reached the bench where she cried in Bernie's arms. 

She tensed at the sight of the white envelope, punctuated at the top and threaded through with red ribbon. It was looped through one of the wooden slats and swayed in the breeze, like a lover's note left at a secret hideaway. 

She pulled the envelope loose. 

-

It was evening when Bernie knocked on her office door again. At her calls, Serena stuffed the envelope in a drawer.

"Hi," Bernie said.

"Hi," Serena twisting the pendant of her necklace in her fingers.

"I've erm . . . just been to my superior."

"Oh," Serena chuckled weakly, "I thought I was your boss." The joke missed its marks, entirely. "I mean . . . I meant . . ."

"It's okay." Bernie couldn't meet her eyes. "I . . . I've resigned." 

Serena's heart plummets in her chest like a stone.

" _What_?"

"I . . . it's for the best."

"Don't you have to give notice?"

Benrie shook her head. "It's technically a sabbatical. I was offered it a few weeks back." 

"You never said." 

"I didn't tell you because it never made a difference. They offered me it and I knew the answer straightaway. There was no choice necessary." 

"But now there is?"

"Serena -"

"How on earth is this for the best?" Serena's voice was biting, and Bernie felt it sink into her skin. Sharp.

"If I'm not around there's no rumours. There's no source for them. No evidence to use for black-mail." 

"We sorted all that out." 

"You know it's not that simple. I couldn't bear it if something . . . happened. You've got Jason, Elinor, your family." 

"But not my friend." 

Tears burnt in Bernie's eyes, she blinked them back. "I'm sorry, this it's just . . too dangerous." 

"We're not hurting anyone." 

"I know." Bernie stepped towards Serena, takes her face in her hands. "I know." She captured her lips between her own tenderly, fleetingly. "This way no one gets hurt."

"Damage limitation," Serena murmured.

Bernie drew back, felt a tear on her cheek. It didn't belong to her. She turned for the door.

"Bernie," Serena's voice was strained, small, "please. Don't go." 

Bernie pushed down on the door handle. Didn't turn back.

Serena yanked open the drawer with the envelope in. Tipped the contents out on her desk. 30 photos. _One for every year she's ruled,_ she thought with a twisted smile and tears flowing down her cheeks.

The photos were all of the day in the vineyard. 

Her and Bernie on the bench, Bernie taking in her arms, Serena nestling her head in the crook of her shoulder. 

Her and Bernie stood up. Bernie feeding her the grape. Serena eating it. Kissing her fingers.

Serena felt a violent urge to throw up.

There was no note with the photos. No demands. No threats.

Serena snatched up the photos, tore up them until her hands were sore and there were only fragments scattered over her desk. 

 _What good has it done? Nothing_.

The originals weren't hers. Whoever took the photographs likely has hundreds of copies.

She drank herself to sleep.

-

The next morning, Elinor hammered at her bedroom door. The moment Serena opened it, eyes bleary and head pounding, Elinor thrust her phone in Serena's face.

"Just when were you going to tell me you're a lesbian?"

Serena moved back, blinked. The photos gradually came into focus."Oh god. What site is this?"

"Every site, mum. It's everywhere." 

" _Fuck_." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact of the day: I wrote around 130,000 words of lesbianism last year.
> 
> If anyone's interested in the songs that inspired this fic.
> 
> Wish That You Were Here - Florence and the Machine 
> 
> I Miss You - Adele
> 
> So Far Away - Mary Lambert
> 
>  
> 
> Basically all I listened to when Bernie was away in Kiev.


End file.
